Just before the end of 1989, Microsoft made available the first pre-release version of the long promised 32-bit OS/2 2.0, which was intended to be the first mass-market 32-bit PC operating system. This was accompanied by a press release detailing the $2,600 OS/2 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK).
Unfortunately, the December 1989 pre-release of OS/2 2.0 may not have survived to the present day. But in June 1990, Microsoft shipped the second pre-release of the OS/2 2.0 SDK. And that version has now turned up, after twenty years of searching, and nearly a quarter century after its release!
Michal Necasek at OS/2 Museum
OS/2 is one of the biggest what-ifs in tech, and the whole origin story and demise of the platform is worthy of a big budget drama series. It also happens to be one of my favourite retrocomputing platforms of all time, so I may be biased.
I still have my OS/2 2.0 SDK printed docs. The floppy disks are long lost, unfortunately. Good times.
I have the book “Showstopper!” on my reading list. It is a personal story on the launch of Windows NT, and of course its separation form its roots the OS/2 NT, “the operating system that never was”.
On one hand, yes, it is a missed opportunity which led to Microsoft and IBM going different directions. On the other hand, maybe for the world of computing, it might have been better.
Microsoft and IBM as two separate monopolies were bad. But imaging if they continued to dominate the market together. No open DOS alternatives, no viable PC clones. Every business running and IBM machine along with Microsoft OS/2.
Maybe we dodged a bullet.
I agree that we probably ended up in a better place, but for a different reason.
OS/2 had nothing at all in terms of user access control, and this could have ended up as a complete disaster. It would be like if we were still running Windows 9X-based operating systems in 2024, where any downloaded executable could overwrite any file anywhere in the system.
Bolting this kind of functionality onto the side of an existing operating system would have been a nightmare, but by starting NT from scratch it was built-in from the ground up.
NT was designed as a workstation and server OS primarily, where multi-user support was needed. OS/2 (and 9x) was designed for single-user PCs in the home or office, where others weren’t likely to use them.
Because NT was targeting the otherwise dominant UNIX market in the server and workstation space, NT had to offer similar functionality, including filesystem security and UNIX(-like) file permissions, as well as multi-user support. It was only in later years (particularly with the adoption of the Internet) that these features were seen as mandatory for modern consumer OSes.
Both Microsoft and Apple had similar issues in this field, at roughly the same time. The single user and co-operatively multitasked MacOS was replaced by buying NeXT and the NeXTstep OS, to be used as the foundation of Mac OS X. Microsoft on the other hand already had Windows NT, aimed at business and enterprise customers. It was quite trivial, relatively, to get NT into shape as a consumer OS.
OS/2 of course, by this time, had slipped into obscurity with a lot of the other non-multi-user OSes of the 90’s, including BeOS, RiscOS, AmigaOS etc
This is an interesting point. All modern operating systems pretty much moved to Unix like systems, are are indeed Linux themselves (Mac, Android, Chrome).
NT was always supposed to be a “New Technology” from ground up. Even Windows persona on top if not directly implemented by the kernel, but rather as a separate subsystem. Having a microkernel allowed them to support different personas, including Unix, and later Linux (and at one point OS/2, but as far as I know, command line only).
> Having a microkernel allowed them to support different personas
It’s not a microkernel.
Also, the OS/2 personality did have an official MS Presentation Manager implementation as an optional extra.
https://virtuallyfun.com/2021/05/19/presentation-manager-for-windows-nt/
Download here:
https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-os2-presen/for-nt-40
Technically, you are right, NT was a “hybrid” kernel. But as far as popular operating systems go, it was the closest to a pure microkernel we could get:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_kernel#:~:text=Windows%20NT%20was%20the%20first,criteria%20of%20a%20pure%20microkernel.
(Until Windows Vista, when they opened up the kernel to drivers like Audio or Video, and when blue screens became a common occurrence).
(The other one is XNU for Apple systems, and Zircon for Google’s Fuchsia, but that is only deployed to a limited number of systems)
And thanks for the PM link. I will put that into my archive.
Note: MacOS is not Linux. It’s a certified UNIX with a lot of BSD technologies welded together with NeXT technologies running on a Mach-based microkernel. It can run a lot of Linux-compatible software, but there is nothing of Linux in MacOS.
Good catch, that was a typo.
Another great article from Michal at OS2Museum.
If only I had the hardware and the that dev kit back in the day.
These rare materials ought to be made available for download; it seems like he doesn’t care about preservation of them and just got them for bragging rights.
Wouldn’t the documentation still be under copyright?
Johann Chua,
Technically yes. Would a company bother going to court over it? Probably not. Archival organizations like the internet archive play fast and loose with copyright laws and it’s regularly gets them into legal trouble by poking active beehives…
https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/music-labels-sue-internet-archive-over-digitized-record-collection-2023-08-12/
I feel copyright laws have gotten expanded too far and the legislative process has corrupted the original purpose of copyright. After 25 years maybe it should make it’s way to public domain instead of creative works getting locked down for multiple lifetimes.
Alfman,
Archive.org gets explicit exemptions from laws like DMCA: https://archive.org/about/dmca.php. And then they don’t, since they are treated like a library, the government would be usually on their side.
Another “do first ask questions later” was Google (the old Google in “do no evil” days) scanning all books in and out of copyright, and going to court to defend this process. Even though the entirety of books are not available to public, they still made them available to searching, and also to libraries.
And yes, this shows the copyright had gone too far. These should not have been necessary.
sukru,
Libraries exist because of copyright, but they don’t get an exception from it. I know people appreciate what they do, it’s arguably a net benefit for society, but still archive.org have been found guilty of infringement many times for violating laws.
https://apnews.com/article/internet-archive-copyright-lawsuit-salinger-426e29f566c00d87ffeafbc388ace3b4
I’m aware of that too and I also think there’s value to digitizing works that are out of print yet decades away from entering public domain. My concern wasn’t that google were overstepping the line but that giant corporations could buy preferential treatment in the copyright regime for things that would be considered infringement for anybody else without high priced lawyers.
As others have said, copyright still applies, and the issue is what risk people are willing to take. Personally I avoid dealing in things like this, even though the build here is … very interesting.
AFAIK what happened here is the product listed on eBay, which was bought by somebody with sympathies to those who investigate these old betas, and the contents were shared privately.
The same build was also covered on VirtuallyFun, and he shared VMs with these bits on archive.org: https://virtuallyfun.com/2024/02/26/an-actual-look-at-microsoft-os-2-2-0/
His account looks to have also uploaded the original disk images: https://archive.org/details/@neozeede
They are. I have the link.
I ran the original news story on this:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/microsoft_os2_2_0_beta/
I’m in touch with both the finder, and Mr Necásek. They will be public soon.
I guess I might have leaked stuff too early then, lol
some of us never got that memo:
https://archive.org/details/msos-2-2.0-pr-2_5_14
I don’t know what to alternative reality to hope for really. Its really easy to put on rose colored glasses and forget how terrible things were at the time. As much as I liked OS/2 and was wowed by its capability and stability on pretty weak systems the business side of things would have sucked. IBM’s whole motivation was to get a monopoly and squeeze all profit from it, charging thousands for a Fortran compiler, and a completely separate charge to install it correctly to qualify for support. I don’t want a present with a strong IBM. Maybe an alternate world where 386 BSD takes over some how. Or BeOs.
> Maybe an alternate world where 386 BSD takes over some how.
It very nearly did happen. Richard Stallman is why it didn’t.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050727225542530
You ever get a copy of the discovery for the infamous lawsuit? It’s crazy! There was clearly a big plan as an exit strategy from the CSRG about selling BSD on i386 mainsteam.
I would be an interesting alternate reality where MS doubled down on Xenix rather then moving on to NT. They definitely could have gobbled up some BSD people, maybe SCO. or the Unix assets from ATT.
Some where, MS buys the ATT Unix assets and Sun. How weird of a world would that be. LOL
I worked at a bank in the 1980s and 90s and one of our check sorters had an OS/2 computer that kept track of stats. One day it was having problems and the guy from IBM was called to come in and figure out what was wrong.
Well he couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I had experience in over 8 different computer OSs at that time and I was the IT person for that building so they came and got me to see if I could figure it out.
I did within just a few minutes and I got curious as to what OS/2 was. Just about that time the beta for OS/2 2.0 was coming out and I had an account with IBM so they sent me an invitation which I went to.
Now the check sorter used OS/2 1.2 or something like that, pre 2.0 and it basically just looked like DOS 2.0 or something like that. Anyway, I went to the IBM building in Seattle (watched the presentation and they gave out disks with the beta for 2.0.
Now I liked computers but there were many things that I didn’t like about them (and still don’t like things from Microsoft). But it was obvious that Microsoft wasn’t in charge of the desktop for OS/2. At least if they were they were a group that was TOTALLY different than any Microsoft group that I’d had experience with and I personally knew over 80 people at Microsoft including a couple cousins that worked there (I like them anyway).
Anyway, I installed OS/2 2.0 beta on one of my computers that I’d been running DOS on. And even though it was towards the lower end specs for the OS/2 2.0 beta I very quickly LOVED this version of OS/2. For the first time I could configure different configurations for each DOS session and I could easily run 8 to 10 different DOS or even Losedows 3.1, both of which I was VERY unimpressed with, until I could run them inside of OS/2.
Why? Amazingly they ran faster and they crashed a LOT less. Somewhere around 90+% less than stand-a-line DOS or Win3.1.
We also had a database called R:Base which had DOS, Win3.1 AND OS/2 versions. And the databases AND scripting were totally shareable between the OS/2s. So I could develop a database in OS/2 and just copy it to a DOS or Win3.1 computer and it would run (the data, not the app of course, I had to install the proper version for each OS).
I also installed it on a computer at home and I was able to configure DOS sessions for games which ran on either DOS or Win3.1 and the difference in speed and reliability was an AMAZING difference. I was HOOKED and for the first time I LOVED instead of tolerated an OS.
Unfortunately politics between IBM and Microsoft and then politics between different divisions inside of OS/2 ruined a chance to dethrone Windows as THE OS for everyone. I still think that OS/2 is better than Windows for its time. And if IBM and Microsoft had come to an agreement to let OS/2 run Win95 apps on OS/2 and continued through with agreements through to today I would still be using OS/2 because a lot more developers would be writing OS/2 apps since more people would be using it since you could run all the Win and DOS apps too.
Yes, you can still get and run OS/2 but really the OS/2 stalled and is still mostly in the state it was in 1998 with mostly just updates to be able to run on modern hardware.
However, in 1998 I bought my first Mac which ran what is now Mac Classic. I’ve been buying Macs ever since. For __me__ Macs are FAR better than Windows is and Linux … I just want to be able to install and run my apps and not fiddle with Linux to keep things running. Note that I’ve had over a dozen different distributions of Linux over 10 years and ran that on a separate computer. But when the power supply died on that computer I didn’t bother replacing the power supply or the computer. I’ve just been using my Mac.
Which doesn’t mean that I love MacOS. It just sucks a LOT less than Windows does. My two favorite OSs were BeOS and OS/2 and right now I’m only running Mac because it sucks less than Windows and Linux. I just wish IBM had followed through with OS/2 because I would still be using it to today.
Oh, I want to add that when OS/2 2.0 came out I bought 10 licenses for work. I had four computers that I personally used because I would start something like compiling something in C or Java and that computer would be unusable (due to the undependability of Windows) so I would turn to my second desk and use computer #2. I worked on multiple different programs for our bank so I would usually end up with three different computers compiling code and do my “paperwork” on the fourth computer.
I installed OS/2 on one of them and to my amazement, with the EXACT SAME hardware I was able to run EVERYTHING on that one computer that took FOUR Windows computers to run. Meaning I could have three Windows sessions compiling code AND be able to do my paperwork INCLUDING dialing up MULTIPLE remote servers AT THE SAME TIME using multiple modems each connected to a physical serial port on the back of that one PC. I could barely keep ONE modem session running on Windows without it doing anything else and now I was connecting FOUR modems to ONE COMPUTER and the sessions wouldn’t crash. Windows STILL wouldn’t be able to do that.
I was looking around on IBMs site and found this program that said you could combine multiple modems to act as one with a loss of about 10% for overhead for each additional modem. The person had gotten it so that you could get up to four modems to act as one on OS/2 and he (or she) was messing with trying to get up to EIGHT modems but just hadn’t had time but the source code was there for anyone willing to try. And they said where I could buy an adapter card and how to configure it so that I could have eight serial ports on ONE PC.
Well I downloaded the source code and bought that adapter board and I worked on that program for about two months (I had MANY different things as part of my job so I only had so much time to work on this). At the time my bank didn’t have leased telephone data lines to all of our branches so we had to dial up most of them. Well we had to sync our data between multiple sites each night due to lack of leased lines and we had separate computers that connected to each brand because of the constant failures with Windows.
As it turned out, I managed to get all eight modems working, but not as one modem. But I was able to get TWO sets of four modems working. So eight modems working as two modems. And I was able to use one batch file to connect (two at a time – each set of four connecting to one branch) and it was able to sync all our data for one branch and then move onto the next one and then the next and then the next. Windows could NEVER do that.
I got it to where we could sync ALL of the branches using ONE batch file on ONE OS/2 computer and did it faster than all of the different Windows could do it separately.
Now that I had that all up and running (with an OS/2 computer at each branch and one in my office) and I told management about it and they saw how excited I was. That’s when they told me they were finally going to get leased data lines to all our branches so I wouldn’t need to do dial ups anymore. But they, as a geek you got to have fun, right?
Well yes I did and yes I was happy that we finally got leased data lines to all the branches which meant they could sync 23 hours a day (one hour for backup at each site).
There were MANY reasons why I LOVED OS/2 and HATED Windows. That was just another reason.
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